We had the Puglian dish orecchiette con cime di rape tonight. You can use any short pasta but orecchiette is the traditional thing and without it the dish would be delicious but not authentic. As a matter of fact, the fact that I use tomatoes is not authentic either, but I think they add a lot. In Puglia they use stringy turnip tops, very nice too, but I've used purple sprouting broccoli or tenderstem to good advantage and tonight I used that new-fangled veg, kalettes, aka flower sprouts. Delicious. If you use tenderstem, you need to cut the stems into small pieces (leave the tops whole), otherwise you end up with a bit too much crunch.

For two people:

Put 250g orecchiette pasta in a very large pan of boiling salted water, having noted the required cooking time on the pack.

In your best shallow casserole pan, put two cloves of finely-sliced garlic into three tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil. Add dried chilli flakes (or fresh chillies) to your taste. The dish should be quite spicy but not fiery. Sauté gently for a couple of minutes.

Add a handful of good cherry tomatoes, cut in half. At the same time add a goodly amount of chopped fresh parsley. Simmer that lot gently for a few minutes to soften the tomatoes a bit. Season gently.

Two minutes before the pasta is due to be al dente, throw 200g broccoli/kalettes into the pasta pan. It will slow the pasta down by a minute, which is what you want.

Three minutes later, having checked for doneness, drain the pasta/greens pan quickly and throw the mix into the sauce. You need a bit of the pasta water to go in there. Mix thoroughly and serve up, topped with a grating of pecorino (or parmesan) and a drizzling of your finest olive oil.

You'll find fussier versions of this that require you to pre-cook the greens, etc., but forget all that. This works a treat. It's one of our favourite dishes, and Mrs Steve is very hard to please, I assure you.